Cutting wheels are used in dredging to cut a relatively hard bottom of a water body before the bottom particles are transported to a dredging device or the like via a suction tube.
A cutting wheel is known from NL1009385, where the cutting wheel is driven by an engine that has drive elements at opposite sides of the cutting wheel. The cutting wheel comprises two rings of cutting elements, whereby the rings are each formed by several segmented parts of the ring, connected by an outer ring. The rings of cutting elements are connected to each other by an inner ring, such that they form the cutting wheel but remain at a distance of each other.
In case such a cutting wheel or the drive elements are damaged, the cutting wheel needs to be dismounted, which can only be done by taking apart the segments of the cutting wheel. This dismounting requires that the dredging period will be suspended for a considerable amount of time.
In addition, each segment of the cutting wheel needs to be manufactured separately and to be assembled before the cutting wheel can be used for dredging. This means that replacement of a cutting wheel is tedious work and costly.
It would therefore be desirable to provide an alternative cutting wheel system that alleviated at least some of the perceived inconveniences of the prior art.